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A solar panel charges Sister Paula Gonzalez's golf cart. The Sisters of Charity nun helps lead Ohio Interfaith Power and Light, a coalition of religious leaders and lay people worried about climate change. "A connecting with the Earth is beginning to happen in our culture," she said.

Religious community helping planet -

She drives a solar-powered golf cart, lives in a chicken barn she converted to an energy-efficient home, and sometimes refuses to fly because planes create too much carbon dioxide.

Sister Paula Gonzalez of the Sisters of Charity of Cincinnati is among a growing number of people in the religious community who believe environmentalism isn't just a cause, but a commandment.

"I detect an enormous feeling among people who want to have more meaning in their lives," said Gonzalez, 75, co-chairwoman of Ohio Interfaith Power and Light, a diverse statewide coalition of religious leaders and lay people.

"A connecting with the Earth is beginning to happen in our culture."

Gonzalez joined about 100 people yesterday at the coalition's first conference, held at Broad Street Presbyterian Church in Columbus.

The hot topic? Climate change.

The keynote speaker, the Rev. Sally Bingham, environmental minister at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco and a founder of the Regeneration Project, called global warming "the most important moral issue for this generation."

War, terrorism and poverty, while important, she said, "pale in light of what potentially could happen to this planet."

Bingham said she is encouraged because religious groups are finally getting a seat at the environmental table alongside scientists and politicians.

Ohio is the 24th state to join the coalition, Bingham said. She said the Buckeye State is particularly important because it relies so heavily on coal for energy production. Al Compaan, director of the physics and astronomy department at the University of Toledo and a solar-power researcher, said it's a myth that Ohio doesn't get enough sun to support developing alternative energy.

Most of the state gets 86 percent of the sun that Orlando, Fla., does and 79 percent of the sunlight that San Diego receives, Compaan said.

David Wilhelm, former Democratic national party chairman and campaign manager for President Clinton, now works to bring energy-related and other venture-capital investments to Appalachian Ohio.

He said that with Gov. Ted Strickland, a Democrat, and Ohio House Speaker Jon Husted, a Republican, advocating renewable energy requirements, the state is moving in the right direction.

Still, he urged religious leaders to lobby elected officials about alternative-energy issues being debated in the General Assembly.

Wilhelm, a native of coal country in southeastern Ohio, said he has "seen firsthand the result of an economy that relies on nonsustainable resources."

Gonzalez, known as the "solar nun," has three degrees, including a doctorate in biology.

After learning about solar energy more than 20 years ago, Gonzalez designed and did much of the work in converting a former chicken barn at the Sisters of Charity into "Casa del Sol," the apartment she shares with another nun.

She also renovated a building on campus that is heated in the winter entirely by solar and geothermal energy.